Waste collection service branded ‘cheapest in London’ to be £25 more expensive than proposed

By Ben Lynch, Local Democracy Reporter

The annual cost of a garden waste collection service in one borough is to be £25 more expensive than initially proposed, after council benchmarking found the fee would be the cheapest among local authorities in London.

Hammersmith and Fulham council had included a provisional £65 subscription fee for the new collection service in its 2024/25 budget, which was approved earlier this year.

Cllr Sharon Holder, Cabinet Member for the Public Realm, has now upped the annual fee to £90, after subsequent research identified the charge “would be the cheapest subscription in London”.

The scheme was included in the council’s Reduction and Recycling Plan (RRP) in January this year. At that point, it was not known whether a fee would be involved.

The £65 charge was revealed in the run-up to the council’s 2024/25 budget, with documents detailing how the service was expected to bring in £650,000, assuming 10,000 households sign up. The ongoing cost to the local authority to run the scheme was estimated at £278,000.

In a new decision notice published this week, Cllr Holder approved a recommendation from officers to increase the charge to £90 a year following additional consideration of “the costs of providing the services from a collection and disposal perspective”.

The average annual fee among the capital’s local authorities is £75, officers wrote, though these are typically seasonal or fortnightly collections. Hammersmith and Fulham’s scheme, which is to be introduced on July 22, will involve up to 49 collections a year, primarily weekly though with a break in December/January.

“At an annual subscription cost of £90 per annum, this equates to £1.83 per collection which is significantly cheaper per collection than comparable boroughs,” the decision notice adds.

The revised charge will bring in a further £250,000 than the original rate, assuming 10,000 households sign up. The frequency of collections and charges are to be reviewed annually.

The council’s RRP, approved in January, noted how Hammersmith and Fulham is ranked third out of 308 local authorities in the country for collecting the least amount of waste per person, and has the ninth highest dry recycling rate in the capital.

Pictured top: Hammersmith and Fulham council (Picture: Google Street View)